The real issues for public education are these:

[LWolf]

1. A vibrant, fully public system that offers equal access to high quality education for all is essential to a democratic republic. It's also essential to achieving economic and social justice.

2. Conservative, neoliberal, and religious factions have wanted to destroy public education for decades. Public education is a threat to those whose agenda depends on passive, obedient, non-thinking, easily deluded masses. It also puts a kink in the need for a large cheap labor pool and a large pool of cannon fodder.

3. The efforts to bring down public education have, over the last several decades, included: Underfunding. Understaffing. Overcrowding. A wide-spread and successful propaganda campaign against public education, public schools, and public educators. Organized and persistent efforts to privatize. Legislation and policies enacted that deliberately set public schools up to fail, lending faux legitimacy to privatization efforts.

4. Those efforts have left public schools and educators demoralized and unsupported in their efforts, the scapegoats of the nations willingness to place blame rather than take responsibility for the real causes of educational dysfunction.

5. Those real causes include: under-funding, under-staffing, over-crowding, and authoritarian standardization of public education; the determination to treat schools like a business instead of a social service and like factories instead of communities; the economic and social dysfunctions rampant in our nation; the inequality of funding and other resources; the determined efforts to downgrade educators from professionals to assembly line workers; the disdain for, and non-support for, public services in general, including education and other public services that are inter-connected; the meddling of outside, private, corporate interests using their $$$ and power to influence policy; politician's willingness to embrace harmful policy while calling that policy something positive, and convincing the public that it IS positive, despite evidence to the contrary.

The bottom line at this point is that it's currently politically convenient and popular to attack public education, punish the system and the educators, and "fix" it by privatizing.

For more about those issues:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[Starry Messenger]

1. k&r

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. 6. The only stakeholders who consistently keep the needs of the kids in mind

are the parents and the teachers. Not school boards. Not administrators. Not communities. And certainly not non-profits sponsoring charter schools.

[LWolf]

6. That's correct. It would be good for the nation to recognize and acknowledge that,

wouldn't it?

[Davis_X_Machina]

3. What I've learned...

...is that public school teachers are a bunch of over-paid civil service drones, going through the motions until they receive their bloated pensions.

And that's from reading posters on DU.

God knows what it's like over on Red States.

[NoNothing]

5. A public teacher refused to write a college letter of recommendation

For my sister, despite her stellar record. Why? Because of a contract dispute - none of them were writing letters.

Sorry, but that really hurt. Like my sister was responsible for the contract dispute? How is punishing her for a labor dispute keeping the best interest of students in mind?

It was this event that caused me to reconsider a lot of my assumptions about how public schools are run.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. Because of what one teacher did

I guess I need to hate all doctors because one of them prescribed the wrong medicine for my mother.

I should also hate all Democrats because of the assholes in the party. :crazy:

[exboyfil]

13. But it appears to be a union dispute

which is a group of teachers.

Teachers are like all other professions - most are good to great while some are going through the motions/are incompetent/or have an agenda that does not align to the best needs of the children.

Homeschooling by subject is great. I have been able to avoid some teachers my older daughter had.

[NoNothing]

16. Of course that's silly

But while I won't assume bad faith, I won't necessarily assume good faith either.

[CurtEastPoint]

4. Re: Point 1: Equal access ... quality...

I don't have a solution so help me out.

The way public ed is funded (property taxes, for the most part) ENSURES that there is NO equal access to QUALITY education. Rich district = fancy schools; poor area = shit schools.

I don't like paying taxes but I do it; we all do. It's the cost of living in a free society and educating the next generation. However, it pains me to know that some places have good schools and others don't simply due to the wealth of the area.

Once again, the rich rule.

In my mind, we are not Georgians, or Ohioans... we are all Americans, and as such, should all have what is stated in point one: equal access to quality education.

Other than the lottery or sales taxes, how can public ed be EQUITABLY funded?

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. That's why state and federal funding is allotted the way it is

[ProgressiveEconomist]

11. State funding formulas almost universally shortchange poor children dramatically

See http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Third_World_US/Malign_Neglect_Kozol.html .

State funds for new school construction favor entirely new subdivisions at the expense of rapidly-growing overcrowded inner city districts trying to reduce their class sizes.

Changes in existing funding formulas for teacher salaries and other ongoing costs generally are a zero-sum game, and wealthy suburbs don't want to lose anything to benefit shortchanged children elsewhere.

And federal funds are only a small fraction of K-12 school spending nationwide. There's generally not much "equalization" going on.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. Schools serving low income kids cannot survive without state and federal funding

[LWolf]

9. By being fully funded at the state level.

If every school in the nation has the funds to maintain a quality physical plant, fully staff every school with enough teachers and support staff to ensure that every student receives enough help and 1-on-1 attention to succeed, to keep class sizes small enough to be able to reach every student, to provide abundant paid time within contractual days to plan, collaborate, analyze student needs, and perform all those other extra duties that keep teachers over scheduled and under supported, to staff enough supervision to keep every area on campus safe and respectful, and to pay teachers enough to attract and keep excellent teachers...we still may need some other things.

We might need to make schools community centers that can be open early and close late, that offer tutoring and enrichment before and after school, that offer supervised homework periods, that offer parenting classes and adult ed classes, that have health, vision and dental clinics on site, and counseling and therapy on site, that team with other community organizations to make sure that every student and family has the supplies they need, coats, shoes, heat, lights, and shelter...and maybe even laptops with wifi to keep families connected.

Since local taxes vary from region to region, money can't be locally generated; it has to come from the top, to each district and school. Sales and income taxes at the state level. Some of the money, for community centers, has to come from other sources outside of education funding: state health care programs, etc..

All of it should be publicly, not privately, funded.

[Starry Messenger]

10. More federal support.

Axe some of the defense budget and reallocate to schools. I know, I can dream.

Another, less spending on crap like this story I'm reading right now: 4.5 Million allocated to consultants to launch a new teacher "evaluation" method. http://www.dailynews.com/education/ci_16567282 As a taxpayer and a teacher, I object to my tax dollars being thrown to private pork projects like this one. 4.5 million is a lot of money for teachers and classroom supplies. Why are teachers spending $2000 of their own money to supply their class with learning materials when consultants are getting cream?

[Gabi Hayes]

14. excellent post, to go along with your other, more personal and

poignant ones from that other thread.

but what do all the DU experts who've never spent a day in a classroom have to say?

and what do said 'experts' have in common with uber ed expert Arne Duncan?

pls check your PMs, lwolf

[Reader Rabbit]

15. Your links don't work.

But K&R for the excellent OP!

[LWolf]

17. Interesting.

They all worked yesterday. They are all taken from my journal, most in the archives. I'll check it out.

Edited to add: That's what I get when I copy & paste links from one post to another. Try here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9529942&mesg_id=9535098